10 iconic Gorillaz moments
Monkey business
Inadvertently penning the slogan to clunky high street footwear shop Shoe Zone
“Get the cool shoeshine.” We’re not exactly sure what Albarn was getting on at in this lyric from the band’s debut album Top X single ‘X’. Has such a thing as a “cool shoeshine” ever existed? The process of rubbing blackened powder into formal footwear is about as dull and formulaic as it gets. Which is why it’s kind of hilarious that Shoe Zone adopted the lyric as its slogan. If you’re not familiar with Shoe Zone, aka you’ve never been a child living in Britain and in the education system, it’s a soulless shop that sells boring school shoes. Going to Shoe Zone as kid evoked only damp feelings of sadness at the ending of holidays and the start of a new term. So the fact it used a nonsensical Gorillaz lyric to try and brand itself as cool kind of makes sense in a twisted and not-at-all-cool kind of way. Good work, marketing team.
